


An Unwanted Brother

by hebravelyranaway



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman Begins (2005), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Brotherhood, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Behavior Problems, Childhood Trauma, Explosives, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Mother-Son Relationship, Over-protective big brothers, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Bonding, Therapy, Written before the Dark Knight Rises, because he may be six, but he's still the Joker, cuteness, naughty children - Freeform, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 11:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1603829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hebravelyranaway/pseuds/hebravelyranaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this for a prompt on LJ in 2010 as fairlyfelonious, for those few of you who might recognize it.  I decided it was time to start archiving some of my old challenge fics elsewhere.</p>
<p>Prompt: An alternate universe where a child/younger Joker is in the care of Bruce. I don't know why but I just wanna see it. Bruce is having trouble because the kid is such a little hooligan. </p>
<p>Summary: (Part I) Bruce asks for a puppy for Christmas, but his present turns out to be a little animal that he doesn't think is quite as cute. (Part II) Jack's acting out, and Bruce uses his budding detective skills to figure out that it's not as harmless as it seems, at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unwanted Brother

Disclaimer: I don't own Batman and the Joker, nor am I making any money off of them. The quote from the Muppet Christmas Carol also isn't mine.

Author Note: Little Jack and Bruce are about four and six years old in the first part, and six and eight in the second.

 

 

"There's nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being alone." (Paul Williams, the Muppet Christmas Carol)

 

Bruce looked down at the still little form sleeping in the guest bedroom closest to his parents’ suit. He hoped that the little monster was _actually_ sleeping this time, instead of just pretending to sleep before waking up with nightmares like it had done hundreds of zillions of times already.

He’d asked for a dog for Christmas, and Daddy had told him that he was going to get a surprise for a present, so on Christmas morning, he’d woken up at five a.m. expecting to find a little puppy under the tree just like you see in the movies, but _his_ puppy would grow up to be a big, tough dog that chased down bad guys with the cops like on TV…

But instead of something awesome like that, he’d gotten a baby brother.

To be fair, it wasn’t _really_ a baby, but it _cried_ like one, and it was almost as small as one. And it just hid in its room all day like it was scared of _families_ , or something. Weren’t little brothers supposed to do something more interesting? Like tag around after their big brothers like lost little…like lost little baby animals?

He’d _wanted_ a _puppy_. His new brother wasn’t even his real brother, just some…scruffy kid that daddy had found in the hospital one day. So what if he had been dehydr…dehydra…so what if his mommy hadn’t taken care of him? Why did that mean Jack had to steal _his_ mommy?

Bruce scowled one more time at the little monster that had ruined his Christmas. He supposed that he wouldn’t sell it to the circus just _yet_ , but if it didn’t stop trying to steal his mommy and daddy away from him, well, it was going to find out how much it liked wearing stupid clown makeup and getting shot through the air by explosives, and other…really horrible stuff. Jack Napier was _never_ going to be his real brother, not if Bruce had anything to say about it.

***

Two years later…

_Bang!_

“Nonononono, wait! Gaaaaaah—”

Bruce rolled his eyes as the psychotic noises his brother was making.

“ _Alfred_ , Jack made something explode again!”

After a moment of silence, Bruce heard hurried footsteps, and then Alfred appeared around the corner carrying a basket of laundry.

_“What?”_ he asked a little too loudly, turning his head slightly so that his good ear was facing Bruce. Alfred had lost his hearing in one ear after the kitchen incident last year. He normally had a top of the line hearing aid, but it was currently getting repaired.

“JACK…EXPLOSION…OUTSIDE!” Bruce yelled at the top of his lungs, flapping his hands wildly as he did so, something he always did by mistake when he had to talk loudly to Alfred, even though he knew that it wouldn’t help the older man hear him.

Alfred winced and covered his good ear protectively, then glared at Bruce. Bruce flushed.

“Oops…I mean, I’m sorry for yelling, Alfred,” he recited in a more normal tone.

Alfred pursed his lips disapprovingly, but waved him off.

“Never mind that now, Master Bruce. You said that Jack made something explode outside?”

Bruce nodded, and Alfred’s eyes darkened with the need for vengeance.

“Oh, _bullocks_ ,” the usually proper man cursed, before dropping his meticulously folded basket of laundry to the floor and sprinting as fast as he could towards the nearest exit.

“Haha, Alfred said bullocks,” Bruce giggled, content to stay within the safety of his room while Alfred dealt with his increasingly problematic little brother, until he remembered one tiny, insignificant detail.

“Hey, wait! You don’t even know which side of the grounds he’s on!” he yelled out the window.

“WHAT?” the butler responded from somewhere within their seemingly endless garden.

_The door isn’t_ that _far from my room, but geeze, for a man his age, he can really run,_ Bruce thought.

He sighed. He had been about to call Rachel to ask her to come over. He couldn’t _wait_ to play cops and robbers with her, and watch her beautiful brown hair flow behind her in the wind as she gracefully sprinted next to him while they chased down the bad guys…Jack could be the robber, as usual, but… What if he had really gotten himself hurt, this time? And Bruce couldn’t very well let Alfred wander around outside without any idea of where to find him.

Bruce scowled and put down the phone.

“Oh, _bullocks_ ,” he said, and hurried outside. Why was it always up to him to save the day, anyway? He didn’t know, but he figured that it was probably one of those ‘life isn’t fair’ things that his mother kept telling him about. One thing he _did_ know was that his brother was _really_ going to owe him this time. First for the dog that he never got, now a day with Rachel, the love of his life… What kind of morally suspect person kept someone from playing cops and robbers with the _love of his life,_ anyway?

When Bruce found his brother in the armory (an outbuilding his grandfather had turned into an exhibition of historical weaponry) with smudges of some type of black powder all over his face and hands, he supposed he should be grateful that Jack hadn’t blown Rachel up yet.

Jack looked up at him with big, pleading green eyes.

“I’m sorry, Brucey.” Jack’s bottom lip trembled, and tears began to well up in his eyes. “I’ll be good from now on, I _promise_. _Please_ don’t tell Alfred.”

Bruce snickered. Unlike the tears and the innocent act, the terror of Alfred’s wrath was real. Ever since losing his hearing to Jack’s experiment, Alfred had been decidedly less lenient with the younger Wayne boy than he was with Bruce.

Bruce looked around the armory, assessing the full extent of the damage that Jack had done to the historical building.

If the damage could be hidden, he _might_ consider helping, but…nope; a giant hole had been blown in the side wall and…shards of metal were embedded in the wood. He felt his stomach drop.

_What on earth_ happened _here?_ He thought, examining the crime scene for clues while stroking his chin thoughtfully like he imagined Sherlock Holmes must when he was solving a mystery. _Metal shrapnel sticking out of the far wall and the Roman shield that Jack had hidden behind, the smudges of gun powder on Jack’s face, the sheer force of the explosion… a pipe bomb?_

“I think Alfred might find out about this on his own, munchkin,” he said carefully.

Jack’s eyes darkened.

“I am _not_ a _munchkin_. I’m _not_ ,” he growled, the innocent act disappearing as the feral little monster Bruce had known was in there somewhere took its place. Bruce ignored the quiet menace coming from the six-year-old in favor of beginning his interrogation. A good detective always got the perp to squeal.

“Dad’s gonna be so angry with you when he finds out,” he said solemnly. He knew how hard Jack had always tried to impress his father, and if that didn’t guilt the truth out of him, nothing would.

To his surprise, instead of getting ashamed, Jack leapt to his feet angrily and pushed him hard. Bruce stumbled a bit before regaining his footing, then tackled him to the ground, pinning him with all his weight as the younger boy struggled and snarled beneath him like some kind of rabid wild animal.

“GOOD! Maybe he’ll finally get it over with!”

Bruce just gaped down at his younger brother, waiting for him to start making sense. When the little demon just seethed and cursed him with words he was sure neither of them were supposed to know yet, he gave in and asked the question.

“Get _what_ over with?”

“He’s gonna throw me out! Well, he should just get it over with. I know I don’t belong here—”

“But I thought you liked being a part of the family,” Bruce said, hurt. He felt the urge to punch his brother out of sheer frustration.

“Nobody’s this nice! I don’t deserve—I’m _bad_ , he _said_ I was, said I was a freak! Well he musta been right. Why else wouldn’t she _want_ me?”

Tears were welling in his eyes, and Bruce could tell they were real this time because Jack always scrunched up his whole face and held his breath until he went red whenever he was trying not to cry.

Bruce clenched his jaw tightly, trying to contain his rage. What he wouldn’t give to do to Jack’s birth father what he had done to Jack. It _had_ to be him that Jack was talking about. Bruce’s mom had told Bruce some of what Jack’s father had done to him, because when he was little he hadn’t understood why Jack was acting so jumpy. He was the only one that Bruce knew of that had ever made Jack cry, so it _must_ have been him.

“You’re not a freak, Jacky,” he said firmly, slowly loosening his hold on Jack when he was sure he wouldn’t attack him anymore, and rolling off of him. “Who said that? Your birth father?”

Jack sat up as well and hugged his knees, nodding.

“Yeah. Well, he was right.”

“No he wasn’t. And dad’s not gonna send you away. These,” he gestured at the destroyed room and its treasures, “are just things. You’re his _son_. You _know_ dad doesn’t care about money. He’ll just be happy you’re okay.”

A few tears streaked down Jack’s cheeks, and his nose began to run. He scowled and wiped it with the back of his sleeve. Bruce grimaced, distracted despite himself. _Yuck_.

“He’s gonna be so mad at me.”

“He’ll be mad ‘cause you coulda really gotten hurt. But the most he’ll do is ground you, and maybe send you to that psychologist that,” Bruce grimaced in remembrance, “that I had to go see after I fell into that cave.”

“Oh, yeah, when Brucey fell into the well,” Jack giggled, elbowing him.

Bruce scowled and shoved him hard enough to tip him over again. Jack rolled around on his back, cackling gleefully.

“Shut up.”

“Ooh, is Brucey _mad_ ‘cause he wasn’t rescued by _Lassy_?”

Bruce glared at him, but felt the corners of his mouth start to twitch. He wasn’t happy that Jacky’s source of amusement was him, but at least he was starting to act like himself again. He felt a surge of relief.

“Sure, whatever you wanna think, _munchkin_.”

“I’m not a munchkin!”

“ _Sure_ you aren’t,” he said, sending a teasing, lopsided smile Jack’s way, then sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “Come on, munchkin. Let’s go tell Alfred what happened.”

Jack’s bottom lip trembled.

“Are you sure dad won’t throw me out?”

“I’m sure. And even if he tries to, I won’t let him,” he reassured his brother, holding out a hand to help Jack up.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jack flashed him a watery smile, and took it.

“Thanks, Bruce.”

***

Six months later…

Bruce watched the tears stream down his brother’s cheeks as they listened to yet another Pillar of the Community eulogize their parents. He clenched his fists in anger. Had this person even known their father? Somehow, he found it unlikely that he had ever had a conversation with him that hadn't involved stock prices or fundraising. 

He’d felt so alone, cut off from the rest of the world since it had happened, and he wanted to _kill_ the bastard who had stolen their parents from them. That would be  _true_ justice, not letting the bastard sit in some cell upstate, well-fed and unrepentant. But…Joe Chill hadn’t stolen his entire family. He still had Jack, and he was all Jack had too, now. He _had_ to protect him. He couldn't leave him to go to jail, and that's what would happen if he got revenge.

Maybe he could still find a way some way to make the world right again for them even if he couldn't avenge their parents.  Even if it seemed all but impossible now, he couldn't lose hope.  He had family to look out for. 


End file.
